It’s called the quarantine 15. 15 lbs of extra weight thanks to all the chips, pizza, burgers, and whatever other comfort food we’ve slammed into us, to cope with Covid. To be honest, it could be called the quarantine 25 for me, or 35. Or maybe 50? Who knows. I quit paying attention. Apparently it’s widley believed the average person who spent any time at home isolated during COVID could expect to gain 15 pounds, thus the “quarantine 15”. A lot of us have suffered a little weight gain thanks to quarantine, but nothing compares to a 26-year-old Chinese man who was recently labeled Wuhan’s fattest person after gaining a whopping 220 pounds during the city’s five-month lockdown.
The man, referred to only as Zhou, to protect his privacy, wasn’t exactly fit and trim before the coronavirus started wreaking havoc in Wuhan, but at least he kept his weight in check, worked at a local cafe and lead a relatively normal lifestyle. But that all changed when Zhou started spending most of his time indoors. Unable to burn off any calories, he started gaining weight, and in a few months’ time, he had ballooned to 616 pounds – over 200 pounds more than he weighed before the Covid-19 epidemic.
He’s now being treated at the Wuhan University Central South Hospital after telling doctors his weight had made it impossible for him to sleep comfortably anymore. Dr. Li Zhen said his team is hopeful that Zhou will be able to lose at least 50 pounds so he can safely undergo a gastric bypass or stomach reduction surgery to help him shed most of the excess weight. Hopefully he can turn this around, so he can return to safe weight levels. Although why do I feel like many of us can identify with his struggle?
